Old Sample CDs/CD-ROMs, do AKAI/ROLAND etc. formats have advantages? or Audio is good enough?

[Caine123]

yeah, this question from the topic , i wonder cause i see some sample cds in the akai format, emu, roland etc. these should be convertable with kontakt etc. but if the same sample library is also available as audio i guess this is easier to use? no need to convert to wav/flac. or is there any advantage over CD Audio version? thx guys

[whyterabbyt]

well, the obvious conclusion would be that they are probably not raw audio, they're already in the appropriate file format for the sampler, same as with presets/patches for any software sampler. with multisamples, key assignments, splits, layers and whatever else is appropriate to the sampler.
audio version gives you... audio aka 'make yer own damn patches'

[Caine123]

well, the obvious conclusion would be that they are probably not raw audio, they're already in the appropriate file format for the sampler, same as with presets/patches for any software sampler. with multisamples, key assignments, splits, layers and whatever else is appropriate to the sampler.
audio version gives you... audio aka 'make yer own damn patches'

thx!
but if i get e.g. an akai sample cd and i dont have akai or roland atm, i read you can import in kontakt. did you or anyone else test it how well it is?
mostly i use my own samplers as i dont like konatks gui/small gui and fiddly behaviour, tal sampler etc. are quick and awsome .

[whyterabbyt]

In the back of my head, Im pretty sure Ive done this as a test with disk images of Akai CDs many years ago, via different software, probably Extreme Sample Convertor. But not actual CDs, or Kontakt.

[BertKoor]

i see some sample cds in the akai format, emu, roland etc. these should be convertable with kontakt etc.

"etc": sure yes. Extreme Sample Converter, FmjSoft AWave Studio, the old Chicken Translator, and the new kid on the block ConvertWithMoss. Each converter will have its limitations on what format it can convert and what aspects it does convert faithfully. Not all sampling engines are created equally, without doubt there will be functions that cannot be translated from one sampler to the other.

Afaik Kontakt (ehm, which exactly - the K.player?) has no support to import "foreign" sample formats other than .aiff, .wav and .sf2, at least, I'm not finding any documentation about it. I don't own the product, so can't comment further on it. But for the rest of the discussion I think you should stop mentioning Kontakt explicitly. Me thinks it's a bad example for a sample player.

Or you meant to write "to Kontakt" instead of "with Kontakt" ???

but if the same sample library is also available as audio i guess this is easier to use? no need to convert to wav/flac. or is there any advantage over CD Audio version?

If you just want the raw audio of a single sample, then I guess CD Audio suffices.

But a proper sampler patch has much more metadata: which of the dozens of samples to use in what pitch range and what velocity, the exact loop points, articulation variations, perhaps even envelope & filter settings.

You could argue that when it's available as CD Audio as well, then there can't be much of that metadata you miss out on. But this will vary and needs to be evaluated case by case.

[whyterabbyt]

Afaik Kontakt (ehm, which exactly - the K.player?) has no support to import "foreign" sample formats other than .aiff, .wav and .sf2, at least, I'm not finding any documentation about it.

I think they used to include some support, but that was dropped, maybe at K4 or K5. Again from the back of my head, but might have been code from ChickenSys.

Anyways, there's some ancient evidence of it:

https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/ar ... s-kontakt/

Hmmm, maybe it was K6 that dropped it...

http://zine.r-massive.com/importing-leg ... kontakt-5/